Philippine Railways (PNR) Derailment :(

jon-monon

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I suspect they do some, in fact I've seen rail inspection cars, but I'm am sure it is way substandard to what we are used to.

http://homepage2.nifty.com./honsyuutetudou/index.htm

(see link under photo, train derailment)

PNR MOW:

4P1021059.jpg


This one is in Lucena, which I believe is nea rhte derailment:

2Sany0061.jpg


There is rail to be had for repairs:

3Pb250485.jpg
 
Jon and Mathew - When discipline and dedication ARE removed from an organization, equipment and logistics, no matter how ample and modern these maybe, these don't mean anything. It's a deep-seated "demoralization" due to corruption within the higher-ups.... Investigation should be directed at those people manning the HELM of the ship and not those small people throwing the "docking ropes". Investigation should be placed on an Independent Body and not on THOSE MANAGING THE PNR for they are themselves responsible, if not the cause of this neglect.....! We, Filipinos, had lost the premiership and the prestige of owning the first Asian air carrier (the Philippine Airlines made its first International flight to the US of A just after WW2) and I hope those people in power choose not to lose the historical railway PNR!

MhmdFAROUK
 

jon-monon

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Wonderfully said, friend.

The Philippines is a great country. It's full of great people. It's made great acheivments. If only we can save her from the corruption so deeply ingrained in her government.

I am hoping the corruption itself is improving, even if we are just begining to see it's ill effects. My wife gets dissappointed in all the corruption reports we see on the ABS-CBN TV news report we get here, but I see it as a positive, as they are going after it. When I lived there in the 80's, corruption was seen as unstopable and acceptable. It was normal and common to pay off gov officials on the local level, just to get them to do their job, or to break the rules for you (your choice). I think and hope it's better now.
 
HOPE .... It's hope that bouys up whatever that seemed to be sinking!! And we Filipinos do really HOPE that President MACAPAGAL- Arroyo (note the capitalization) COULD pick up what had ben left off by President Marcos. It was during the administration of Marcos that PNR received its only attention it deserved and the realization of the first light rail transit system. (Did you know that the LRT was almost scraped by then Pres. Aquino and Party just because it was/is a project of the Marcoses?) ..

MhmdFAROUK
 

jon-monon

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Now that is politics at it's best! Don't do what's good for the country, nor what's good for your voters, nor what is right; do what hurts your enemy! I had so hoped things would turn around in ten years, but it looks like they won't in 20... maybe 30 years? Sad thing is, most of the people are good and want what's good and what's right. Or they are so poor they just want their next meal. There is no way letting the rail system fall apart is good for the economy, especially along it's path. :( Sad it is.
 

Chessie6459

Gauge Oldtimer
Now that is politics at it's best! Don't do what's good for the country, nor what's good for your voters, nor what is right; do what hurts your enemy! I had so hoped things would turn around in ten years, but it looks like they won't in 20... maybe 30 years? Sad thing is, most of the people are good and want what's good and what's right. Or they are so poor they just want their next meal. There is no way letting the rail system fall apart is good for the economy, especially along it's path. :( Sad it is.

Yes it is Jon. Very Sad. I have to agree with you. I mean come on, what would we do without the railroads? They are a part of our everyday lives. They supply us with what we need. Maybe they don't see it that way there? Maybe jon it will turn around sometime soon. But you never know what is going to happen.
 

jon-monon

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Sadly they truck everything around at 5 times (or more) the pollution, expense and risk to life :( There is very little freight traffic on the rails. Truck wrecks are a daily event on the highways, and unless it involves a bus full of people, it doesn't even make the headlines.

I think in te Southern areas, like where our friend Farouk lives, this is less of a problem. From what I saw during my limit stay on the Southern Islands, they overload the vehicles perhaps more, but the roads are a lot slower. I never took the highway from Manila to Bicol without seeing at least the carcasses of wrecked trucks along the way. Last time, on our way back from Bicol, we passed a fresh headon between two cocoanut oil tankers. I'm sure there were no survivors. Both trucks landed in the ditch with the cabs crushed, the steering wheel sticking out of the hole where the windshield once was. :(
 

Chessie6459

Gauge Oldtimer
WOW :eek:

From my experience of being in the fire service and being around it all my life. I would say ( by the way you discribe it ) that the drivers would be D.O.A ( Dead On Arrival ). Cause most people would not survive anything like that. It is like 1 out of a million that does.

Only if there was a way to help them realize that overloading the trucks, shipping most of it by trucks is really cutting down on the railroad. At least here in the U.S.A and other Countries the Railroads and Trucks work together. But i am not saying they don't down there. It's just different hearing about how they operate and then we look at our railroads. But i guess they will continue on shipping most of it by trucks and then probably forget about the railroad being there. :( :(
 

capt_turk

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Judging from personal experience, the engineer was probably going too fast because his superior ordered him to, to keep up a schedule. I've seen that situation happen too many times. Of course, when everything falls down around your ears, the superior will deny ever having ordered it. I've had it happen to me. Now I carry a tape recorder with me all the time. They give me an order to do something that I think is unsafe, I record them giving it. If they won't let me record it, or give it to me in writting, I pack my duff and go home. I don't have a wife or kids to feed so I have that option. Many people don't. I've seen way to many people pushed into dangerous situations that they felt they had to either take or end up seeing their families starve. Go after the boss's. They are the one's who are supposed to enforce the rules and saftey. Don't go after the poor smuck that's just trying to keep from starving to death by following unsafe orders.
 

jon-monon

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We're movong forward

http://news.balita.ph/html/public_html/article.php?story=20041117203250746

Wednesday, November 17 2004 @ 08:32 PM GMT

17 - 5 alleged rail thieves identified
National

Five people who allegedly stole the Bicol south line railway parts have been identified, Bacolod City Rep. Monico Puentevella said Wednesday.

It is reported that Puentevella, House committee on transportation chairman, has instructed authorities to arrest and file charges against the five suspects following last week's derailment of a Manila-bound train in Padre Burgos town, Quezon province that killed 12 people.

Philippine National Railways (PNR) officials earlier said missing tracks and rail spikes might have caused the accident.

PNR general manager Joey Sarasola said the agency receives at least five pilferage reports a month.

Puentevella said he is set to meet PNR officials on November 25 to discuss the initial probe of the accident.

The lawmaker earlier filed a bill that would impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for those caught stealing train tracks.

Puentevella also called on President Arroyo to explore the loan offered by the South Korean government for the modernization of the south rail project.

Puentevella said the 600-kilometer Bicol south line is crying for repairs, having received only P135 million a year from the government compared to the 32-km North Rail that received P28 billion.

The Calamba-Bicol line carries an average of 2,000 passengers daily. It runs one roundtrip from Bicol to Manila a day
 

Chessie6459

Gauge Oldtimer
I am glad to hear that they caught those responsible. Looks like they will not be seeing the outside of a cell for so time or never again. I often wonder why people would do that and they know they are going to get caught one way or another and then suffer for it for sometime. But that is just their own fault and now they will pay for what they did.
 
Jon ;

Delicious sticks of "addidas" you got there (from the deep fried "mani'). It's heawrt warming to see the "people" in charge really taking charge on remedying the sad condition/s the PNR is in. I pray it will be done in consistent and determined manner: not a 'Ningas Cogon" so to speak in tagalog (meaning burning a bunch of tall-elepant-grass leaving no ember) a proverb for a half hearted endeavor.

LiveSteamer, it's the pervading poverty that drive few weak and ill-charactered people to commit such trivial but deadly crime as stealing a very, very sound RAIL to be sold as SCRAP!!!

Yes, to Jon , in the place where I lived, Mindanao, there is no railroad although it's as big as the island of Luzon where the PNR operates. Mode of transport betwee, and among, cities in the island's provinces are either by buses and boats (ship, fastcraft, ferry) for passengers and truckings for goods and merchandize. Airlines (4 domestics there are) are reserved for the "affordables." If one pays closer observations heavy and constant movement can be discerned that would make railway operations viable in the island. There is a program to have one but, being as such, it still is a PROGRAM.
But there's hope....
 
Jon, I was one day to talking to my daughter who was trying to pacify her crying 3 year old son. When I enquired the matter I was told the boy wanted to buy PAL (PhilippinesAirLines, I thought?) and stereo (at his age, I thought again). But, I regained my thoughts when told that PAL is BBQ chicken wings and that "stereo" is BBQ chicken head (name suggested by the two chicken eyes)! I missed on what the BBQ chicken intestine is called. You know?

But, the clincher is that HOME ALONG DA RILES!!! This is the terminology used to described, refer, etc to those squatter shanties lining either side of the PNR railroad tracks which start from somewhere immediately outside Tutuban Station inb Divisoria, Sta., Cruz and up to (almost unbroken) to Binan, Laguna! I know that these are REAL people living in these areas but in keeping with safety and efficiency these same people have to be moved elsewhere appropriate for human habitation. Shanties (if you can call these abodes) located few inches from the railhead is NOT what I call healthy sorounding! The government must really, reaslly look into this omnipresent BLIGHT and clean it permanently!

MhmdFAROUK
 
jon-monon said:
The sad thing is, I don't know that the accident will make them change anything. :(

I may be pesimistic but I am not planning on any train shots around Legaspi in 2006 now :(
Well except for the 900 believed trapped down there which will probably become a monument or be slowly stripped for parts and sold.

Wow that is pesimistic of me :)
As a big fan of the PNR I do hope I am wrong.....

Cheers
Brad
Philippine Railways SIG
http://www.geocities.com/steelhaven_ee/LocoShed.html
 
jon-monon said:
Sadly they truck everything around at 5 times (or more) the pollution, expense and risk to life :( There is very little freight traffic on the rails. :(

Mornin,
Is there any freight at all nowdays?
I've heard very little confirming freight trafffic since that private container firm at Laguna shut up shop and placed their one and only loco up for sale.
There was a recent report of a train (think it was a Baby-Boat) headed through Manila with what appeared to be some logs or pipes, however this was likely a perway run.
Those I asked on the PNR seemed somewhat amused when I asked about freight trains.
I agree with everyone that they should do their level best to get some of the freight onto rail and off those heavily congested roads. I noticed a huge different in pollution over just the last 5 years, it was almost unbearable during January (admitedly the huge Tondo fire didn't help much).
Still I can't wait to return to that fantastic country :)

Cheers
Brad Peadon
Philippine Railways SIG
http://www.geocities.com/steelhaven_ee/LocoShed.html